The owner of Rolling Stone, The Hollywood Reporter, and Variety has sued Google, alleging that its AI summaries use its reporting illegally and reduce traffic to its sites.
The lawsuit was filed by Penske Media, an American publishing conglomerate with over 120 million online visitors a month, in federal court in Washington, D.C in what is the first incident of a major US publisher taking Google to court over its AI summaries.
News organizations have long been accusing Google’s AI Overviews of stealing traffic from their sites. Earlier, online education company Chegg and a small Arkansas newspaper, the Helena World Chronicle, have both filed lawsuits against the tech giant.
Chegg claimed that Google’s AI summaries feature is reducing the company’s ability to compete and is eliminating demand for original content.
Companies, including Penske Media, argue that despite AI summaries offering links to the original source, readers often don’t feel the need to follow them. Additionally, Penske Media says that about 20% of Google searches that link to one of its sites now show AI Overviews, with the percentage continuously increasing.
Penske Media has also attributed a sharp drop in affiliate revenue — more than a third from its peak by the end of 2024 — to decreased traffic from Google. The complaint alleges that discouraging user traffic in such a way “will have profoundly harmful effects on the overall quality and quantity of the information accessible on the internet.”
The company added that it faces the choice of either blocking Google from listing its sites in its search results, which would be devastating to the business, or fuelling its AI summaries.
The lawsuit seeks unspecified monetary damages, as well as a permanent injunction against Google.
In response to the lawsuit, Google said that AI Overviews offers a better users experience and manages to send traffic to a wider variety of sites.
“With AI Overviews, people find search more helpful and use it more, creating new opportunities for content to be discovered,” Google spokesman José Castañeda said, according to The Wall Street Journal. “Every day, Google sends billions of clicks to sites across the web, and AI Overviews send traffic to a greater diversity of sites. We will defend against these meritless claims.”
Earlier in September, Google was allowed to keep its Chrome browser in a rare win for Big Tech in its battle with US antitrust enforcers. The decision, however, was not welcomed among many publishers who now don’t have a choice to opt out of AI Overviews.
On September 10th, Britannica Group, the company behind the 250-year-old Encyclopedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster, filed a lawsuit against Perplexity, saying its answer engine systematically scrapes its websites, unlawfully copies articles, and drives traffic away.
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